Business as Unusual
by Imipak
Summary: An explorer and adventuress has flying lessons. How dangerous could that possibly be?
1. Business as Unusual

The tall, slender lass strolled out into the meadow and paused in her inspection. Still a few years shy of getting her pilot's license, she had spent most of her life piloting the wreckage of an Adder from the flight deck next to her brother. The Cobra MK III was covered in rust, looked even worse than the Adder – but it still flew.

She had even been able to have it modified, to include upgraded sensors, planetary scanners and other surveying equipment. Granted, they were all obsolete, but they still got the job done. Satisfied, she wasn't going to fall out of space, she called out to her brother "She's ready, James" and waited for her brother to confirm the start of her "highly unofficial" flying lessons.

For as long as she could remember, Cally had wanted to be an explorer. But exploring took know-how, and modern equipment – a lot of it. She would still need to trade for a living, until she got enough credits. But exploring was a dangerous business. She figured that if she could learn the tricks of the trade before it mattered; she at least stood a chance of surviving when it mattered. James her brother, had offered to teach her. Today was her first lesson.

At the private hanger, she saw Kerry, James' gunner, climb aboard the Asp. The Asp was compact diamond-shaped vessel, ideal for exploration and smuggling. It was thus configured more for running away than anything substantial.

James , her brother, was already waiting for her at the Cobra. James spoke up, "Kerry will fly point, in case we run into any difficulty. I doubt we'll encounter anyone, I'm thinking more system malfunction. This Cobra isn't new, after all."

Cally nodded, privately doubting the Asp could do anything useful even in an emergency. But she held her reservations to herself and got onboard the Cobra.

The flight deck was primitive, compared to the Asp's sleek modern interface, but was similar enough that she didn't think it would give her a problem. Cally slid into the pilot's chair, strapped herself in and started running through the preflight check sequence.

James, in the copilot's seat, watched carefully. A couple of times, he reached over and paused Cally, correcting her on a step before letting her continue. Once he was satisfied, he signalled for her to begin the start-up and launch sequence.

The Asp gracefully flew up into the atmosphere, the Cobra following somewhat unsteadily behind. Once clear of the atmosphere, they triggered their jump drives and flew towards Giant's Causeway, a gas giant with seven moons.

The journey was quiet enough and mostly involved Cally adjusting the engines so as to gracefully _manoeuvre_ into position. Occasionally, she would need to tweak the direction but she had learned various tricks of the trade from James on how to set yourself up a point that would give you a clean and easy run on a planet.

Pirateswere a problem in this system. By not going directly in, you could avoid the ones who hovered near the typical lines of approach. You only needed to adjust a few times if you were unsure of what you were approaching or of any moons or asteroids in the vicinity.

Since this was a practice for exploration, Cally tackled it as if it were a complete unknown, much to James' approval and Kerry's annoyance. The less predictable the flying, the easier it would be to lose the Cobra – or crash into it.

They exited jump drive just as the furthest moon out appeared on the scanner.

"Ok, I want you to target the moon and obtain the technical data on it.", James instructed. Cally lined to the ship and activated the planetary scanner. Nothing happened. She thumped the controls. There, the scanner burst into life. Checking her display, it showed pretty much what she had expected, rocky moon, no atmosphere, no mineral concentrations, nothing of interest.

Next, they headed over to an asteroid that was crossing inside the outer moons. This proved a bit more interesting. The scan showed there was metal, but there was something wrong with the signal. She took another pass and concentrated the scanners, boosting the algorithms by twenty percent. A closer examination of the readings revealed what was initially showing up as mineral ore deposits, was actually the ancient wreck of a truly gigantic spaceship, so large it registered even on the Cobra's primitive gear.

Gliding over the debris field, Cally could make out roughly the pattern of the fragments and the trench carved in the asteroid from the ancient collision. Because she wasn't supposed to be flying, she would not be the one credited by the Galactic Archaeological Society if it turned out to be important. Nonetheless, she needed to do a good job of logging everything. The cameras were on, the sensors were still operational, it was looking good.

But what was it? A ship that was very long and relatively narrow, apparently not very good at manoeuvring or with very good sensors, and was travelling at a low enough relative speed as it struck the asteroid for so many of the fragments flying off to be below escape velocity.

Could this be one of the fabled Generation Ships – ships sent out before the advent of faster than light travel? She had heard of them, but had never seen one even in pictures. Very few had. If it was, it needed to be surveyed and recorded but not touched. Approaching a Generation Ship was forbidden by both the Alliance and the Federation, and discouraged by the Empire.

Her brother monitored her slow sweeps over the wreckage. "There's only so much we can do here, this is a job we have to hand over to the experts. You need to move on." She nodded and ran one more pass over the site.

Satisfied at last that she'd found enough outlying debris for the scientists to answer the key questions, she progressed to her third and final training target of this flight, an ice world with a turbulent atmosphere. Since the Cobra was not rated for atmospheric surveys, she was not expected to fly into the atmosphere, just circle above it and log anything interesting. Her ship could detect metal deposits, landing sites and inhabited areas. She wasn't expecting much, but this was typical work for a surveying mission flight, so any real-world experience would help.

Sensors churned away as she orbited. Lots of water. Lots of ice. A landed ship. No debris and the sensors indicated a working identification beacon. She decided to leave them alone, they were either innocent but well-armed miners or bad news and she wasn't inclined to annoy either. Smugglers would often use desolate planets to stash cargo that wasn't selling well right now. She was confident it wasn't a pirate, as they would have disabled the beacon.

The journey back was briefly interrupted by a change of seating, James docking at a Corriolis space station and filing a report on the crash site. For this, he was awarded two hundred credits, more to be paid later if it proved significant. He quickly transferred that to Cally, grinning. "Hey, it was your work!"

She smiled. It was almost nothing, but it was an almost nothing that she had earned. Potentially discovering an unknown wreck of a fabled Generation Ship left her wanting to see what else she could discover and maybe even get the credit and the credits for. She wanted to start her next flying lesson immediately, she was so eager.

They waited until James had cleared the space station, before she practically pulled him out of the seat. Once they had switched positions back and she slowly descended through the atmosphere towards the hanger. Her excitement of her flying lessons before now replaced with the frustration at the mundane, practical nature of reaching the ground intact.

Landing was tricky and she bumped the ship a bit before it came to a complete stop. There was a world of difference between a simulator, a fantasy of flying, and actually being on a real, working, ship in a real, working, gravitational field on a planet with a real, working, weather system that currently included rain and gusty wind.

Still, she was down and safe. The sensors indicated no damage before she ran through the post-flight checklist and powered down.

Breath out. Always a good idea after breathing in. She hadn't realized just how tense she had been.

There was no opportunity to fly again for a couple of months. School and fishing for edible mushroom crabs just weren't as appealing, but unfortunately they were required. When she next got out, though, James was looking odd. "I'll tell you when we get to the Cobra", was all he said.

When they got there, there was a message in the inbox. "Open it", James said.

It was brief and from the Galactic Archaeological Society, specifically from an Admiral Kara. The wreckage was indeed from a Generation Ship. One of the earliest Generation Ships they had any record of. The asteroid had apparently intersected it in deep space. The crew probably never knew it was there until it was too late. A low speed impact from the side.

Because it was prohibited to contact Generation Ships, nobody really knew much about them. The pirates who raided them rarely said much, even when identified. At least, not that was publicly known. When it came to the really early ships, nothing was known at all. They had never been found. It had been assumed that they had all suffered catastrophic failures, but with no wrecks having been found, nobody knew much more than the old legends. This was the first chance anyone had had of finding anything out.

The message ended with a request for a personal meeting with the discoverer aboard the space station at a given time on a specific date. She looked at the ships chronometer, and adjusted for local time – it was two hours from now. Cally almost bit her lip off. On the one hand, she needed to be in on that meeting. On the other hand, unlicensed piloting might cost her her career before it even started..

Then she looked again. The message asked for the discoverer. Not James, who had been registered as pilot and the sender of the information. Official messages always stated names clearly and directly, so that there was no ambiguity. Officialdom being what it was, they invariably assumed that only pilots flew and that nobody filed forms on behalf of another. They already knew it wasn't him, then.

James looked over at Cally, thoughtful. Cally's fear was palpable. Finally, James said "Sometimes you have to take the chance, I'll come with you and if there's a police presence we can leave. Nobody will know who you are."

Cally nodded, not altogether reassured. Still, she needed to do this. James flew the whole trip, as she was too nervous. A pilot with shaky hands tended to end up smeared across the landscape or the side of a space-station.

They got there in plenty of time, scouted round, saw no unusual activity. James snagged drinks for them both at a slightly seedy bar before they wandered into the meeting. Again, she shouldn't really be drinking but her nerves needed help. He pointed out to her a couple of drunk pilots arguing over a bottle marked as highly explosive and highly corrosive. "If they're lucky, only one of them will be in intensive care later on."

"And if they're unlucky?"

"The family will go bankrupt paying for the damage caused if any of that drink spills."

"I admire your choice of distraction", she said dryly.

It was just about time, so they headed over to the conference area. It only took a few minutes to find the right place.

The meeting room had only one gentleman already present. No police, then. He introduced himself as Steed.

"You must be the young lady who discovered the wreckage. We could tell from the footage that it was a relatively inexperienced pilot and therefore not your brother, but I must admit we hadn't suspected anyone quite so young. Still, you've a long and illustrious career ahead of you, if you want it. Starting now, if you'd like."

"Now? Ummm, I must admit I'm a bit confused."

"You were able to get extensive detailed technical information. So much information, in fact, that crash investigators had built a preliminary assessment before anyone got there. The independent cooperative of the twelve systems has a need for explorers who can help in investigations. If you agree, we'll issue you with a pilot's license, backdated to your flight."

"I'm still not sure what you'd want me to do."

"You'd be paid by the government to explore. Occasionally, we'll give you a location to survey. A wreck in space, a wreck on an asteroid, an anomalous unidentified signal, a place nobody has come back from, things like that. We will pay very well."

"That sounds dangerous."

"So is all exploring. So is unlicensed flying. We are willing to make both of these safer."

"Safer? How?"

"Complete repair of your ship, upgraded sensor modules, upgraded power plant. We will donate better weapons once you're assigned something dangerous."

"You must have better pilots out there."

"We do, yes. Known to people not keen on investigations. But acquiring that skill makes you nervous, too nervous to do the surveying you did. And mostly too specialized in flying to have ever learned to survey or explore new environments. Pilots are common, explorers are rare."

Cally glanced at James. His expression was a mix of horror and desire. Completely torn and this wasn't even his dream. It was hers. And, you know what they say, you only live thirty seven point five times. She suspected some stories grew in the telling.

"I'll do it. Where do you want me to go?"

"Right now, you need to go to your private pilot's class. Three levels up, turn left, first door on the right. You'll need a steadier hand."

Cally studied at the class for almost four months, learning basic and advanced flight in space and atmospheres, basic combat and advanced evasion techniques. This last part drummed in just how dangerous some of the work would be.

At the end, she was issued with a license, in a meeting with Steed.

"You gave me a lot of training, you presumably have somewhere you want me to go."

"As a matter of fact, I do. There's a brown dwarf, it's not on the normal maps. We've estimated where it is. You can jump to an estimated position, it's just a little more dangerous. Once there, you estimate how far you're off, and continue until there. We need it mapped."

"Uncontrolled jumps can end in ships being destroyed. That's another reason you're asking me, I'm more expendable."

"I can't deny that. But you will be paid very well on return."

Cally felt a little nervous. She knew full well what she had signed on for – missions too dangerous and likely too unrewarding to risk valuable people, where the authorities could deny everything easily. Likely, a hundred eager youngsters had received a similar talk. She was indeed expendable. Equally, though, missions that might lead to some standing, sufficient credit and adequate hardware for what she wanted to do. She drew a deep breath and counted to three before speaking.

"When do I start?"

Three hours later, she was back in the pilot's seat of her Cobra. James had to go back to his own work and Steed had arranged a shuttle for him. This time, it was just her. A dubiously licensed pilot. True to his word, Steed had upgraded the systems. The sensors were almost modern, the shield generators only a couple of years old, the repairs professional but clearly from salvaged plating. Stuff Steed could afford to lose, but nonetheless a sufficient upgrade to almost call this a decent explorer.

"I hope I know what I'm doing..."

She knew, though, that she was just too curious to back out now.

She ran through the preflight sequence and requested permission to launch. Clearance was almost immediate. Engines up a few notches, thrusters lifted the ship clear of the landing pad, landing gear up, accelerate forwards and a well-rehearsed exit from the space station.

A couple of old-time spacers, watching in a nearby Python, grinned as they watched the unpolished but adequate performance. They drank a toast to new pilots, remembering their rookie years and their equally clumsy first efforts at flying.

She brought up the Galactic map and saw that, yes, a waypoint had been programmed for the middle of nowhere. Everything was ready. She just needed to get clear of the space station, a task that took just three minutes and too long.

"Come on, come on, how long does it take?"

At that moment, the message came in over the communicator that she was now free of the controlled zone around the space-station and that space traffic control was signing off.

Struggling to remember everything James had mentioned about how to improve your odds on jumps starting or ending in deep space, she pointed the ship in what she thought was the right general direction. In a normal hyperspace jump, the computers would ensure you faced the right way. Here, the computers didn't know what that really meant. The error correction software kept deciding the exit point was an error.

She had marked three points on the scanner, based on star maps. She now twisted the Cobra until three stars fell directly under each. Astrogation at its most primitive, but as long as those were the right three stars, this was hopefully good enough to not die horribly. You could never be sure with uncontrolled jumps. She hit the switch to enter hyperspace, listening to the mechanical countdown then felt the sudden jarring forces as they slammed into the craft.

The stars smeared. The ghostly swirl of the region once known as witchspace spun around her, as the instruments totally failed to make sense of the nonsense of hyperspace. Strange forms appeared and vanished. Here is where anything could happen and, if you didn't have a computer controlling things, it probably would.

She didn't. She had to fight the controls every inch of the way, if a unit of distance in hyperspace could be said to equate to the ancient measure. So much as a fraction of a degree off the vortex she had created and she'd slam into different points of real space separated by light-years not inches. And her training was not that extensive.


	2. Flight of Her Life

The craft burst out of hyperspace more-or-less intact. A subsystem for making toast had exploded due to a power surge. She would have to clean up the galley later, though. Assuming there was a later, one should never get overconfident in space. Especially after an uncontrolled jump.

The ship had emerged clear of, well, anything.

Her astrogation console was initially blank, but only because it had no idea where she was. It had no difficulty pulling up the map of the galaxy, just not her position in it.

She resigned herself to doing this the hard way. It could be handy to use primitive radio beacons and she'd had an archaic receiver fitted. Well, she'd done most of the work, but it sounded more glamorous that way. It could handle quite a range of frequencies and she set it to scan. Nothing.

She turned the ship and scanned again. This time, a pulsar. Once every half second, she calculated. Repeating this turned up four pulsars and a globular cluster. There were no distances and directions were crude, but only one place in the universe would have pulsars of those timings in those directions.

She grinned. She had an app for that. A slightly non-standard piece of software on the astrogation console. With that information, the console could get a fix and she'd be back in business.

The smile faded. No such configuration? The radio could receive anything that was up to thirty degrees off the central line of the ship in any direction. The software allowed that to be up to thirty five degrees. It also allowed pulsar timings to be up to half or double the given value. The plotted position didn't have to be in known space, pulsars were known in many galaxies and it would calculate for those as well. It could even handle the void between galaxies.

And yet she could see stars. She could hear them, too. She was somewhere.

She was nowhere near her mission objective, so she shelved that as a problem to get back to. For now, she needed an accurate fix on where she was and how to get back.

Pointing not quite in the direction of a star at random, she engaged hyperdrive.

This ride was less thrilling but more intense. She had limited fuel by which to jump to a star by guesswork without landing inside it. That meant flying at a tangent towards a succession of stars, hoping sometimes it would be same one as before and that she'd get closer. She had absolutely no way of knowing if either was true.

After the fifth such ride, by which time serious systems issues were arising, she landed inside a solar system. Her computer denied any knowledge of it, but her radio indicated beacons in space. Primitive, robust beacons of the sort used by cheap illicit mining operations.

That meant supplies, though preferably not at gunpoint. Her ship would be defeated by a thrown insult, never mind a laser.

A battered Dodo space station orbited the fourth world out, a watery world with nothing much to show for itself. There was no message from traffic control, no lights seemed to be on, no ships were outside. On the other hand, the door was open and the systems were sufficiently operational to keep the station going. There were no impact craters, so shields and defensive systems were obviously working.

Gliding in revealed a deserted interior. A docking bay suitable for her ship was activated, however. Her suspicions flared at this, but she had no choice. She remembered advice from her father. The test of a trap is not whether you are suspicious of it, but whether you are caught by it. She decided that she would need to restrict the caught part to her personally.

Gliding almost smoothly to a halt on the landing pad, she disengaged the engines. Docking clamps locked on and the elevator descended to an interior hanger.

No threats were visible, no pirates swarmed outside, nobody was trying to cut their way in. So far, so good. Outside atmosphere was breathable, but she'd take her suit anyway. And a laser knife.

She opened the hatch and clambered outside. Nobody. She headed over to the main corridor and to where the greasiest spacer bar should be. It was there, but there wasn't anybody occupying it. No abandoned or spilled drinks. Someone had tidied up, as no spacer was this clean.

She didn't trust the drinks, but noted that the computer showed all stocks at 100%. Whoever cleaned up had resupplied, too. Why bother, if there were no customers?

The next few businesses were self-evident in nature, although some were illegal on her world. Again, very carefully and thoroughly cleaned and restocked.

A study of a kitchen area revealed karamga steaks, a delicacy on her world. Cutting one in half then heating it with the laser knife revealed that they looked right, smelled right and burned right. At least that item was real. She had wondered, as it's easier to stock up with fake items if you've nobody to sell real ones to. No supply lines or maintenance costs.

Somebody was burning a lot of credits, perhaps tens of millions a month, for an illusion only she was likely to see. And those steaks were fresh, so they were spending that right now.

She jumped at a distant sound. The first sound not triggered by her since she arrived.

Thinking fast, she left the kitchen and headed to the bar. If it was some newcomer, they'd head there too. If it was a wannabe captor, they'd take a look there. It was the one certain spot.

As with most bars, there was a discrete concealed antechamber for rich bounty hunters, security guards, etc. They could monitor the bar without being detectable, even with high-end surveillance equipment. She thanked her brother for mentioning this and how to get in. It occurred to her that whoever was entering might try to go there too, but it was designed to be defensible and she would have some advantage.

A bottle of "burning man" whiskey went with her. It was well-named, containing ingredients banned on most worlds due to their properties as hallucinogens and/or blister agents with hominid and reptilioid species, along with a chemical that was highly reactive in the presence of oxygen. The drink would literally burn all the way down. It was popular with students for drinking games. It was also an excellent deterrent to bar room brawls.

Further up the corridor, the burned steak was being prodded.

Cally watched the scanner as three men entered the bar and moved around. They didn't speak as they thoroughly searched the place. One man noticed the empty bottle and signalled something to the others. Another, who seemed to be the leader, nodded. They seemed keen on surprise and seemed even more keen on being heavily armed. Cally reckoned that approaching them would be a mistake without knowing their intentions.

A sound behind her. She span but was not fast enough. A hand was placed over her mouth but the eyes of the person the hand belonged to were not menacing. Amused, but not threatening. He gestured to her to be quiet and follow him.

They slipped through a secret exit into a maintenance corridor. From there, they made their way up to what would have been the wealthier part of the station.

Once there, he grinned. "You were going to take on three Imperial special forces with a pocket knife and a bottle of whiskey?"

"People likely to be a threat see enemies everywhere. Soaked in this, they'll really see enemies everywhere. That makes the person in front with a gun a target."

"How did you plan on soaking them? Asking them nicely?"

"High explosive, ignition source, high pressure contents, the shrapnel should help get it into the blood stream, too."

"You really are vicious, aren't you?"

Cally shrugged. "I like being friendly. Friendly is easier when you're alive."

"So I see. Does friendly include telling anyone why you're here? I'm confident it's not for the view, unless you really like water."

"That sounds a little like an interrogation. My ship developed a fault, I needed spare parts, by chance I came here."

The man nodded. "Just enough and no more. Good. You've some sense, although if you'd had more you'd not be here."

"Sense is almost never what you think it is."

"A pilot, a lunatic and a philosopher. I'm intrigued."

"Where is here?"

"That's worthy of a philosophical treaty in itself."

"I didn't mean philosophically."

"Neither did I."

"Explain before I decide to waste the whiskey."

The man looked nervously at the bottle. "There are a small number of semi-stable wormholes dotted around each galaxy, mostly linking galaxies together."

"Don't take me for a fool. Even if this was another galaxy, I'd have fixed my position through pulsars."

The man looked impressed. "You're only the second to have thought of that trick. You're right, this isn't another galaxy. I said most. It's possible, but only just, to create an isolated pocket of spacetime. As long as a wormhole runs into it, you can enter or leave at will. If the pocket is small enough, and this one is only twenty five light years across, fixing a position is impossible."

"Who are the others?"

"People using the pocket to hide things, people, information, anything that will give them an edge."

"They're from the Empire."

"Yes, but not necessarily of the Empire. I've seen nothing to suggest they're taking orders or getting supplied. That doesn't mean anything, of course. They are special forces and that means they're going to operate a lot independently. But it does allow for the possibility of them being renegades. Besides, why the space station? They could land on any world and be less noticeable."

"A space station has a better field of view and stealing a wreck is easier than building a base."

"Very observant. It's also much harder to hide for long."

"The how have you managed it?"

"Who says I have?"

Cally grinned her most manic grin. "You value your life too much to be talking to an enemy."

The man's right hand twitched, but as Cally could see no gun, she didn't worry too much. She was confident he didn't have the speed. All she had to do was press a button and the laser would slice into the bottle. Unless he was an android or in invisible battle armour, he wouldn't stand a chance.

A door quietly slid open, but not quietly enough. She'd spun, launched the bottle and ignited it within a tenth of a second. The agonized screams of a dying man filled the room. Behind the intruder stood another, gun drawn. "Put down the knife. That stunt will cost you enough."

Cally had no intention of complying. It takes time to point a gun with any accuracy, particularly when blinded by a fireball, and he hadn't had any. She was out of line of sight before the firing began.

What bothered her was not the shooting as much as that at least one shot had come from behind her and had scorched the wall directly in front. She could freak out over being shot at later.

Over a counter, roll, and... a gun against her neck. This really wasn't fair.

Once in a cell, she rested long enough to mull over the situation. Why let her live? She'd killed one, of that she had no doubt, and it was obvious to them - whoever they really were - that she had less reason now to not do so again if she got the chance. She was of no value, merely a risk.

They'd taken her laser knife, to no great surprise, but had been wary of getting close enough to search her. She didn't have any other weapons, but she did have a few bits and pieces. She'd been well-prepared for a dangerous exploration mission, after all. That requires the ability to control critical ship systems from anywhere.

In the event of an emergency, the simple holding cell she was in would automatically open. It's one thing to be casual about hardened criminals due to be deported to a penal colony, it's another to take chances with a drunk whose family would be voting in the next election. She couldn't escape in her ship, it would stand out and was too badly damaged. Therefore...

...she activated the engines and boosters.

The space station didn't rock, it was much too big, but it did vibrate a little. Klaxons sounded. The fire suppression systems were likely down, or half of them would have stayed quiet. The door, as expected, opened and the local force field switched off.

A guard was outside, but he was too distracted by the alarms to notice becoming suddenly dead.

Taking the gun with her, Cally headed through the corridors towards the section's power distribution system. These were in standard locations on all space stations and were common knowledge. She had very limited experience in zero gravity, but suspected that wasn't unique to her.

At this point, thinking was something that took place when she had a moment. Her body was mostly running off adrenalin at this point, oxygen having been largely used up in the running. Shock at her own violence was scheduled for later that evening.

Gaining entry to the power room was not easy, by design. Fortunately, someone had been entering at the time. Their body blocked the door long enough for her to get in. She hit controls at random before blasting the panel.

A small explosion in the room was followed by a larger thud from an explosion elsewhere. The lighting went out. So did the gravity. It took a while to get there, but she eventually headed back out the door, which slid open a little when pushed.

Once in the corridor, she used the door frame to catapult herself down the hallway, only thinking about the stopping part about halfway down. Twisting herself round worked, but resulted in her partially spinning into a wall. it did stop her, though.

Emergency lighting was now on, but only sporadically. She must have done more damage than she had thought. Emergency gravity was sometimes there as well, so she found herself sliding to the floor.

Sounds of men yelling could be heard from multiple directions. They sounded like they were more concerned with the emergency than an escaped prisoner, so she moved in the direction of the docking bays, albeit in the opposite direction to where the remains of her ship would be.

She had expected trouble and was relying heavily on special forces not being trained to deal with semi-vagabond teens. She had to press on, though, or fall into shock. She'd never killed in cold blood before, never seen it, never encountered it, yet had ended the lives of two people who weren't imminent threats and whose faces weren't obscured by being in another spaceship.

She shook, violently, then drove the thoughts from her mind.


	3. There and Back Again

As she did so, she broke. Running as hard as intermittent gravity allows down the one quiet corridor, she smashed into an Imperial engineer leaving a docking bay. Gambling that the ship had finished maintenance, she put a blast into his stunned head, slammed the door control and... faced a guard.

She didn't have the gun ready, the engineer's body was obscured by her but only for now, and the guard's armour was not the sort that a small hand weapon would trouble.

"About time! The test flight is late and the general doesn't like to be kept waiting!"

He'd seen her pilot's overalls and assumed she was the assigned test pilot. This might actually work. She saluted him and went past. This was a much larger vessel than her old one and much newer. It looked experimental, although she recognized the basic controls.

Before the real test pilot could arrive, or the guard could discover her, she slammed the hatches shut and instructed the space station to transport the ship to the main bay. As it did so, she strapped herself in, ready for the flight of her life.

Clamps released, drives activated, engines set to rather more than they should have been. The vessel launched gracefully from the pad and sprang towards a slowly closing entrance.

Missiles armed, lasers brought online, power diverted from systems to weapons. A long, sustained blast by four beam lasers, followed by two missiles, ripped the entranceway open. The station had minimal shields, good enough for micrometeorites, but it was simply too old, too decrepit, too poorly maintained, to handle the punishment inflicted.

They were obviously not ordinary weapons, either. The power drain was too severe, for a start. These seemed to be closer to the weapons she'd expect on a Space Dredger or a battleship.

Throwing everything onto engines, she raced forwards and into space.

The scanner showed two ships in pursuit. They were faster than her and would catch up. Any dogfight would buy time for additional launches. So she did the only thing she could.

An uncontrolled jump.

This ship handled it better than her Cobra had, but things were starting to power down. Quickly, she pushed power back to systems.

No sign of pursuit, but no obvious way out of this pocket of space. Finding that the ship had modern planetary scanners and a ground vehicle, she opted to find somewhere to hide so that she could rest, get her mind back in one piece and think of a solution.

The perfect planet, right ahead. Possibly. She couldn't detect anything through the atmosphere, so was confident nobody else could either. However, that meant she didn't know if she could land, if anyone else was there, if she'd be charred by volcanoes or other natural phenomena.

It was that or be in the open, relying on the size of space to make it hard. Only this space lacked that crucial ingredient, size.

Landing blind, not knowing if you would see the ground before hitting it, would normally send a person into fits of anxiety. She was beyond such rational concern. Spiralling towards slowly was her only concession to normal thinking.

She had to descend as far as the lower atmosphere before there was any indication of where she was. It took getting to ten kilometres above the surface to see anything at all. After that, it was almost easy. Finding a spot to land required finding somewhere flat, sheltered and devoid of distinguishing marks.

Fortunately, that described quite a few places. She chose a narrow valley, limiting directions of visibility or attack by air or ground.

Then she slept for almost 36 hours.

On waking, she ate some of the on-board rations before trying to logically work out a way to get clear. She doubted she could fight the Empire and win. If she survived, it would not be under any condition she would accept.

If these alleged wormholes existed, one had to be in the system the space station was in. They couldn't move the space station and she doubted they could move the wormholes either.

Only, she wasn't terribly sure of where that was relative to her current position.

Punching up the charts gave her the answer. They'd replaced the database with one for this pocket space and the computer could navigate via that. One star showed at the centre and a quick check of the system map showed it did have a Dodo listed for it.

It also listed the wormhole, one light year from the star. A long way to fly, if you're being chased. Even in this ship, thirty minutes flight time ignoring interceptions and detours due to planets getting in the way. Long enough for messages to be sent to any craft in the vicinity, should she be detected.

She hunted around for anything that might help. This ship was intended for raiding, raiders needed ways to be harder to see. Aside from the traditional controls, nothing was labelled.

Ok, change of plan. Instead of a direct flight, she'd fly at right angles to the plane of the solar system. Up, or maybe down, into pure nothing. After forty minutes, she could then fly to the wormhole outside the detection range of any vehicle. Nothing would be that far out. It would then be a fifty minute run to the wormhole, but with greatly reduced risk of interception. Three times the duration, but at one ninth the risk.

Her guilt for the deaths, three at her hands directly and an unknown number from her ship exploding that may have included other prisoners or other innocents, was assuaged in part by the fact that you don't collect elite combat troops or build raiders if you intended to sell fish. Nor do you take innocent explorers prisoner if your motives are pure. The gender ratio of those she had seen had not escaped her.

She rather suspected Steed had set her up. However, there were plenty of easier, quicker ways for the station to be... supplied. Therefore Steed intended for her to get information or act as bait, rather than as a gift. Her training, though, was to explore. Ah! Then it was to get information.

A cursory search showed two planets, in different systems, with ground bases. She was capable of grabbing images discretely and running a scan on the planet. She only had fuel for one, if she intended to get home, so she calculated the most fuel-efficient route and programmed the computer with the target system.

Blasting off was uneventful. The hyperspace journey actually peaceful. Dropping out near the sun of her target world, she spun and headed clear of the plane. Once safely away from the sun, she brought up the details and targeted the world. She would be detected, so she breathed deeply to ease the stress before inevitable combat, checked to see what weapons actually existed, and tried not to think about it. She wasn't a natural born killer, just uncomfortably good at it.

Close to the planet, she dropped into normal space as soon as she got close to the base and programmed the next hyperspace jump as a way to escape. Planetary scans take a while, but so do launches from the planet. She was also close enough to capture images, this ship was clearly intended for spying as well as raiding.

Three ships on scanner, near the surface. It was now a race. Could she complete her own surveillance operation before they got in range? It was going to be close. She diverted some energy from the engines to weapons and brought the lasers online. She couldn't target anyone, yet, though, without interrupting the scan.

The seconds ticked by. The lead ship entered range and she detected weapons being deployed. A laser blast rocked her ship, weakening her shields slightly. A second blast triggered a few minor alarms but nothing more.

The scan completed. She targeted the lead ship, still in the atmosphere, and let loose. The lead ship stopped registering. The laser energy banks were drained in a matter of a couple of seconds and the weapons array was severely overheated, but where there had been three ships, there were now two - heading in different directions - and a smudge.

She hit hyperdrive. She wasn't confident she could take on the two remaining ships, as she had no idea how long it would take for the weapons to cool. Running was better. If you could run, you were still breathing.

Lasers danced around her hull, devouring more of her shields. Pushing the power to systems and engines, then hitting the throttle to get as far away as possible until hyperactive kicked in, she raced within a meter or two of one of her attackers, entering hyperspace just as she got clear.

Once in the new system, she had moments to spare. She had to enter hyperspace again, but not in any place visible. The system she had chosen to make an intermediate stop was one of the pulsars she had observed. If she timed it right, she could fly into the very narrow jet of extreme x-rays that formed the pulse at the precise moment she entered hyperspace and the moment the jet wasn't there.

Her idea was simple, stupidly reckless and next to impossible. You can't scan in half a second and the x-rays would block the scan, so it would be impossible to locate where the hyperspace trace led. At least, that was the idea. But it required precision. And if you're far enough to the side of the x-rays, you can't see them precisely because it's a narrow beam.

Of course, that meant pursuers couldn't, either. Flying near pulsars is dangerous.

She got as close as she dared and looked for the tell-tale glow of ionized gas. It was faint but just visible, allowing her to estimate where the beam was. The question was, was her estimate accurate enough? It takes a quarter second to get safely in to hyperspace and one full sweep of the beam took just half a second. Allowing for dangerous energies to either side and a margin of error, she needed to get this right to within a tenth of a second.

Good thing that her reactions were that fast. But that only made it possible, she now had to do the calculations and start the run, before her pursuers got there. Getting shot at would be enough to make the run impossible.

She began the hyperspace countdown, pointed the ship at a glowing cloud of dust, and kicked in the engines. All power went to the shields, non-essential systems shut down. That way, a slight error wouldn't cause a massive power overload on something unimportant and kill her.

Two seconds. She was on course, but slightly too slow. Engines got an extra boost.

One second. Enemy ships on scanner, but not close enough to be a threat. Three quarters of a second away, too fast, that would get her bone structure broadcast to the universe.

Half a second. Weapons deployment by enemy detected but they're out of range. The target spot is not glowing, which means it'll not be glowing in another half second.

Quarter second. Shields taking damage from secondary radiation, but it's well within their capacity. The enemy are turning to face her, but it's much too late.

Zero. Hyperspace entered. She was now heading back to the world with the space station.

Behind her, the pursuers broke off. They'd seen a bright flash as the stolen vessel had passed over the pole of the pulsar. The wake had been ripped apart by the energies, so they never saw it. They returned to base, satisfied it was either destroyed or crippled if it had made it into hyperspace.

In fact, the ship was operating just fine. At least, for an experimental ship she had only a nominal idea on how to control.

The next part of the journey was uneventful. All that remained was that one final wormhole, possibly guarded. She couldn't divert power to everything, although with non-essentials still off, she did have more power.

She needed to maintain systems and shields, the wormhole journey would be rough. Maximum power there. She now had a choice - if it was guarded, run or fight? Engines or weapons?

She bit her lip. One enemy and she'd destroy it. Never mind who or what. Ethics would have to wait again. That way, she could take her time and get it right. More than that and this was the wrong ship for it. Everything left to engines.

She re-entered normal space. The wormhole was invisible to her but showed up on the scanner. There were no other ships. She'd made it. Engines it was.

She cautiously approached the wormhole. It was barely visible, even close. It was like looking through a raindrop a mile across, showing up only as distortions of the view behind.

Calmly pointed the ship towards the exact centre and threw the engines onto maximum.

Hitting water at high speed is like hitting a solid surface, but it's east to comprehend both. Hitting a negative gravitational non-simply-connected space-time anomaly is like hitting nothing you could possibly imagine. Forces in every direction, including time. The ship buckled, rolled, span, stretched, shrank, shuddered, creaked and groaned.

The ship re-entered normal space about a quarter light year from her home. At least, most of it did. Two external pods now floated alongside as shrapnel.

It took ten minutes for Cally to regain consciousness. When she did, she discovered the computer lacked any maps for the primary universe. However, that was not too bad. She activated the repair pods and patched up a few of the systems. Enough for a short uncontrolled hyperspace jump.

The question was, where to go? To see Steed or to the planet where her brother was?

She needed the maps and she needed the pay. That meant the space station.

Getting there didn't prove too hard. Getting docking permission for an unregistered ship was tougher. However, the flight controller was eventually coaxed into asking Steed. She reckoned he could override such concerns.

Which he did.

On landing, she met up with him. "That was not an exploration of a dwarf planet."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just we don't get too many volunteers for studying invasion fleets."

"You get the images I took, the scans and any technical data on the ship, but that lie costs you the ship, any legal cargo and double pay as danger money."

Steed laughed. "No, you don't get the ship."

"I came in a ship, I leave in a ship. I collected it, it wasn't part of your bargain, so it's mine."

Steed's expression hardened. "You don't want to push your luck."

"Do you have agents in the space station there?"

"I can't give you that information."

"Not that I left much space station."

Steed winced instinctively. He had heard the reports. One of the two agents dead, along with over a hundred Imperial operatives, all told, counting primary and secondary explosions on the Dodo. Another fifteen dead amongst the crew of damaged and destroyed vessels. Cally had been somewhat messier than anticipated. But very effective. The whole training centre and invasion complex had been compromised, with key personnel killed. It had set the campaign back decades.

"Alright, but you have to work for us when needed."

"In that case, you pay for the repairs and database upgrades as well."

"Fifty fifty."

"Done."

"You strike a very hard bargain, young lady."

"No, just a fair one."

"Life isn't fair."

"Gravity works the same for everyone. It's people who don't."

Steed considered that.

"Perhaps. We can discuss philosophy another time, though. Your money has been transferred, minus half the repair costs. Registration will be complete by the time you get back."

She returned to the planet, knowing she'd get rollicking for losing the Cobra. But this new ship would mean a lot. Mining lasers had been added, so it could now do everything the original could.

Things could get interesting.


End file.
